Maxim

The Maxim was the first true self-powered machine gun*, a recoil-operated fully-automatic belt fed weapon produced by Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, an American-born inventor who moved to England at the age of 41.

Maxim's attention was drawn to guns in 1881, when a friend famously advised him "If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable those fool Europeans to cut each other's throats with greater facility." He produced his first gun in 1885, an extremely bulky device with a distinctive bulge at the rear for a rotary crank to reverse the movement of the block, and a unique pointer-operated fire regulator which allowed the weapon to fire at any speed from 1 RPM to 600. Both were eliminated in later designs for simplicity, the crank assembly being replaced with a toggle joint that was the forerunner of that used on the Borchardt C-93 and Luger P08.

Despite some scepticism from early buyers (the Tsar of Russia's officers, when the 1885's mechanism was explained to them, laughed and stated nobody could operate the crank 600 times a minute, while the King of Denmark, on being told how much each round cost, told Maxim one of his guns would bankrupt Denmark in half a day) the gun was an instant success, and was adopted by many national militaries in a variety of variants and calibres. It saw combat from British use in The Gambia in 1888 to the end of the Second World War, eventually being supplanted by lighter and more efficient designs. British use led to a popular saying: "Whatever happens, we have got / The Maxim gun, and they have not." Larger versions of the Maxim were also used as anti-aircraft guns, with the most well-known examples being the British "pom-pom" guns.

Maxim's gun company was established with the help of the Vickers steel company of Great Britain and ultimately absorbed into it, joining with rival Nordenfeldt of Sweden in between; Albert Vickers would later produce his own redesigns of the Maxim, the Maxim-Vickers and later the Vickers Gun.

(*While a Swedish Army Lieutenant, D.H. Friberg, had patented a design for a recoil-operated firearm action using locking lugs similar to those used by many later automatic weapons (such as the Russian DP-28) in 1870, with early drawings for a weapon based on it dating back to 1882, Friberg's design was impractical due to rapid residue buildup from use of black powder, and it is unclear if any firing weapon was produced before Maxim's gun in 1885. Rudolf Henrik Kjellman latter refined Friberg's design to use Swiss 6.5x55mm smokeless powder cartridges in 1907, adding a bipod, water jacket and forward grip and replacing Friberg's hopper feed with a detachable box magazine: this, the "Kjellman Light Machine Gun," was a commercial failure with only ten examples produced.)

The Maxim and variants can be seen in the following films, television series, video games, and anime used by the following actors:

Maxim MG08/15

Maxim MG08/15 - 7.92x57mm Mauser

Maxim LMG 08/15 "Spandau" - 7.92x57mm Mauser

Starting from the year 1915 the variant 08/15 was developed on the basis of the MG 08 to create a weapon faster to manufacture than the Madsen machine gun for the LMG role. From the summer of 1917, the designated as leichtes MG 08/15 weapon was issued to the troupe. The modifications should avoid the time-consuming and slow tracking of the MG troops during storm attacks. The new variant should be usable directly during the attack in the front rows. In addition, the machine gun had to follow the infantry also dismounted. Too many infantry attacks failed due to lack of machine gun support, or too many machine guns were lost because they could not be dismantled in time. Therefore, the machine gun was now performed as a light machine gun with bipod and shoulder rest. Of these, each company received first two, later four. In early 1918, the number was even increased to six. For the transport of the MG 08/15 and the ammunition, the companies were assigned two field cars.

According to the Treaty of Versailles, the Reichswehr only had 1,926 (+ 4% reserve) machine guns of all types approved. However, existed in 1927, a secret inventory of about 12,000 machine guns. After the renaming of the Reichswehr in Wehrmacht, the MG 08 and MG 08/15 were replaced starting from 1936, starting with the active infantry divisions, by the MG34. The MG 08/15, MG 08/18 and MG 08, as well as their machine gun wagons and handcars, were handed over to the reserve or Landwehr infantry divisions to be filled up in the mobilization case with reservists. Occasionally it was used until 1941 on the eastern front.

Trivia: By far the most common German machine gun of WW1 with a total production of around 130,000, it was so ubiquitous that "08/15" (pronounced Null-acht-fünfzehn) is still used in German to refer to something mundane.

Specifications

Weight: 31lb (14.06kg) empty, 46lb (20.8kg) with water jacket filled

O/A Length: 57.0in (1448mm)

Barrel length: 28.3 in (719 mm)

Cartridge: 7.92x57mm Mauser

Magazine: 100- or 250-round cloth belt carried in an ammo chest or 100-round cloth belt loaded in a metal Patronenkasten 16 belt carrier drum. It feeds from the right and ejects the spent brass from the left.

Video Games

Maxim M1910

Maxim M1910 with 'Sokolov' wheel mount, w/o shield - 7.62x54mmR

Maxim M1910 with 'Sokolov' wheel mount & shield - 7.62x54mmR

Maxim M1910, simplified version with smooth water jacket - 7.62x54mmR

Russian-adopted version of the Maxim, adopted originally in 1905 with a bronze water-jacket but modified and standardized to a corrugated-type jacket in 1910. A simplified version with smooth water jacket was adopted in October 1914 and manufactured until late 1920s. Usually seen on the 'Sokolov' mounting which was wheeled with a small turntable.

Anime

Maxim-Tokarev

Maxim-Tokarev light machine gun - 7.62x54mm R

Maxim-Tokarev (MT or sometimes M-T) is a Soviet light machine gun, based on Maxim M1910. It was designed by Fedor Tokarev in early 1920s and put into service in 1925. MT has a perforated barrel cover instead of water jacket of original Maxim; the barrel itself was shortened. A rifle stock and a folding bipod with tubular legs replaced the spade grips and wheeled carriage. The canvas belt capacity was reduced to 100 rounds. Maxim-Tokarev satisfied Red Army only marginally so it was manufactured only in small numbers (according to various sources, about 2,400 or about 3,500). When DP-27 was produced in large numbers, MT was dismissed from service. Most of MTs was sold to Republican Spain and China.

Film

PV-1

Nadashkevich PV-1 - 7.62x54mm R

PV-1 (Pulemyot Vozdushny, airborne machine gun) is a Soviet aircraft-mounted version of Maxim M1910. It was designed in mid-1920s by Alexander Nadashkevich and put into service 1928. Unlike the base Maxim, PV-1 was air-cooled and had ROF increased to 750 rpm. About 18,000 PV-1s was manufactured in 1927-1939. PV-1 was the main weapon of many Soviet fighter planes, lile Polikarpov I-5 and I-15, and Tupolev I-4, and also mounted on reconnaissance planes Polikarpov R-5/R-Z and its ground attack variant R-5Sh. In August 1941 large stocks of PV-1s, removed from obsolete planes, were converted to triple anti-aircraft mountings, designed by Fedor Tokarev. In 1942, about 3,000 PV-1 guns were converted to infantry weapons by mounting them on the Sokolov 1910 carriage.

Video games

Anime

Maxim M/09-21

Maxim (Konekivääri) M/09-21 - 7.62x54mmR

As the Finnish army realized after the fighting in 1918 that the Maxim was a reliable weapon and the machine gun in the army and the Guardia Civil was taken into service, there were further Finnish modifications. The Solokov wheeled bicycle rack created problems and was not the best choice for the forests, snowy landscapes and marshy areas of Finland. So one dealt with the problem and one began to develop 1921 the first Finnish variant. The tripod mount of the German Maxim DWM model 1909 was used as the starting point for the design of a new steel-cane carriage, which could be folded up for easy transport. It was developed shortly before the First World War. These new tripod m / 21 masts were first produced by Crichton-Vulcan (Turku) and later by the Finnish Army Arms Depot No. 1 (A.V. 1, Helsinki).

Maxim M/32-33

Finnish Maxim M/32-33 - 7.62x54mmR

Maxim M/32-33 is a Finnish machine gun, based on Russian Maxim M1910. It was developed by Aimo Lahti and put into service in 1932. The rate of fire was increased to 850 rpm. A distinctive feature of M/32-33 is a snow filling cap to the water jacket that was later copied on 1941 version of Soviet Maxim M1910/30.

Type 24 Heavy Machine Gun

Type 24 Heavy Machine Gun - 7.92x57mm Mauser

The Type 24 Heavy Machine Gun is the Chinese variant of the Maxim, and can be identified by the muzzle disk mounted on the barrel just ahead of the water jacket. Originally adopted in 1935 chambered for the 7.92x57mm Mauser, after the Chinese Civil War a variant chambered for the 7.62x54mmR Russian cartridge was developed.

Maxim-Nordenfelt QF 1-pounder "Pom-Pom" gun

This gigantic 410-pound variant of the Maxim was originally designed in the late 1880s by Hiram Maxim himself, originally as a direct-fire infantry weapon and later as a naval quick-firing gun for attacking torpedo boats and a light antiaircraft gun. It was the first autocannon to enter service and the first AA gun to be used by many of the powers that purchased it: about 450 were produced for various clients. Due to rules regarding minimum weight for explosive ammunition designed for use against infantry, the gun had to fire a projectile weighing not less than 400 grams (0.88 pounds): the final 37mm design fired a 1-pound projectile, hence the name: the nickname of "pom-pom" gun was originated by South Africans due to the slow, drumbeat-like rate of fire. Earlier versions were marked Maxim-Nordenfelt, while later British production versions were instead marked as Vickers, Sons & Maxim (VSM) after Vickers bought out Maxim-Nordenfelt in 1897.

These weapons could penetrate an inch of cast iron plate at 100 yards in the ground role, and proved extremely effective against early aircraft: however, they were practically useless against Zeppelins, since the rounds they fired were delay-impact-detonated and so would have to hit the steel frame of the airship or they would simply pass straight through it. Towards the end of WW1 they started to be replaced in British service by even more scaled-up Maxims, first by the 37mm QF 1.5 pounder and then by the much more powerful 40mm 2-pounder. Despite the latter quickly becoming technically obsolete due to low muzzle velocity and lack of a tracer round, it continued to be used on Royal Navy ships throughout WW2.

In German use it was known as the Maxim Flak M14 and produced locally by Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken, while the US Navy adopted it as the 1-pounder Mark 6.